Calls are mounting for the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Critics claim Cheatle dropped the ball on security measures at Saturday’s Trump rally — saying she has been too focused on woke “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” policies, such as making sure the department is 30 percent women by 2030, to take care of the agency’s more crucial business. They note she even allowed a YouTube influencer to train with agents last year.
Cheatle, 53, served 28 years in the Secret Service and was part of its protective detail guarding then-Vice President Dick Cheney before she left to become head of global security at PepsiCo. She returned to the agency when President Biden appointed her to its top post in 2022.
At the time, Biden, 81, expressed confidence that Cheatle was “the best choice to lead the agency at a critical moment for the Secret Service.
“She has my complete trust, and I look forward to working with her,” the president said.
But two former high-ranking FBI officials told The Post after Saturday’s shooting that from what they can tell, the Secret Service under Cheatle completely blew it Friday.
“It was a total security breakdown from start to finish,” said former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker. “From the total security plan for the rally to the reaction once the shots rang out.
“Imagine if the shooter hadn’t been this kid but a well-trained cell? Our enemies are looking at us thinking we can take Trump or anyone out now without a problem,” the expert said.
Swecker was specifically critical of some of the protection detail around former President Trump after he was shot.
“What I was seeing was DEI,” Swecker said of the agents, who included three women. “And I am not anti-woman. I have three daughters and three granddaughters, and they’d make great Secret Service agents.
“But the women I saw up there with the president — they looked like they were running in circles. One didn’t know how to holster, the other one didn’t seem to know what to do, and another one seemed not to be able to find her holster. DEI is one thing. Competence and effectiveness is another, and I saw DEI out there.
“If you counted down — and I did — it was over 2 minutes to get him off the podium,” Swecker said. “The Secret Service’s job is to, No. 1, prevent this from happening, and No. 2, get him out of the danger zone in seconds. Two minutes is a lifetime. If there had been a secondary shooter, they would have finished him off.”
Swecker also criticized the agents letting Trump get his shoes and do his now-iconic fist pump before they got him off the stage.
“If you remember the Reagan shooting, those agents tossed him unceremoniously in the limo and got him the hell out of there,” Swecker said. “They wouldn’t have let him get his shoes or rise up for a fist pump. And the one reason you can see Trump rise up like that is that the Secret Service agent in front of him was so short. Traditionally the Secret Service had big guys out there who were tall and could block the president and also take a hit.”
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., squeezed off at least five to seven shots — one of which grazed Trump in the ear — at the outdoor rally in Butler just outside Pittsburgh, according to law-enforcement sources.
Sources said Crooks crawled on the roof of a manufacturing plant more than 130 yards away from the stage at Butler Farm Show grounds.
Another former top FBI official told The Post that the Secret Service he once knew is no more.
“It’s been in decline for years, and a lot of it is this diversity bulls–t,” the source said.
“I’m a huge fan of the Secret Service, but what you saw out there … was abysmal. How they weren’t better organized I will never know,” he said. “They were fooling around once the shooting started. … I teach this stuff these days. You grab ’em and go. You don’t fool around.”
But former Secret Service Agent Don Mihalek, who retired in 2019, told The Post that calls for Cheatle’s resignation are premature and possibly unfair.
“I don’t know how you can call on anyone to resign when there are still so many unanswered questions,” he said.
“The Secret Service security plan is done with local and state police departments, and even though [the Secret Service] will probably take the blame for all this, we just don’t know what happened.
“Local and state cops take care of the outside perimeters. We are hearing that one police officer confronted the shooter and then backed off and fell off the roof. We have videos of people at the rally telling police they saw something. We don’t know what happened with that.”
Mihalek also said criticism of the female agents surrounding Trump was unfair.
“Everyone wants to criticize people in a high-stress environment, but even though agents are trained for this, nobody knows exactly how they would react in a high-stress event like this until you are there,” he said. “It looked to me like the agents that were there did as trained, they responded to the threat and to protectee, and once they heard the shooter had been neutralized, they moved him to the motorcade and got him to the hospital.”
A current Secret Service official who did not want to be identified said the anti-Cheatle sentiment “comes from the old guard.
“Diversity has historically not been the the Secret Service’s strong point,” the source told The Post. “So we’re going through the same growing pains that traditionally male white organizations go through.
“But as the agency moves forward and new opportunities are given to the next generation, diversity becomes an important part of the equation. That does not sit well with the old guard.”
Billionaire Elon Musk was among those outraged on X at how the Secret Service seemed to bungle the job.
Musk reposted a tweet from hard-right activist Jack Posobiec who asked, “How was a sniper with a full rifle kit allowed to bear crawl onto the closest roof to a presidential nominee?”
“Extreme incompetence or it was deliberate,” Musk wrote. “Either way, the SS leadership must resign.”
A petition was previously started asking for an investigation of Cheatle so that she would be forced to resign because of her allegedly woke beliefs.
More than one online pundit posted an ABC News interview from last week in which Cheatle confidently told anchor George Stephanopoulos there was “nothing specific and nothing credible out there right now” after Stephanopoulos asked her about possible threats.
Conservative commentator Dan Bongino didn’t mince words on X.
“It is time right now for Kim Cheatle to get her head out of her ass and do the right thing. I could tell you stories for days about her putting politics ahead of presidential protection.
“I want to repeat and can absolutely confirm, the USSS Director Kim Cheatle has repeatedly turned down requests for a larger security footprint around President Trump,” Bongino added. “Despite knowing the threat level is catastrophic. Resign tonight.”
Cheatle was appointed director during controversy the agency faced over deleting most of its text messages from Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol. The agency attributed text deletions to a data migration.
As part of the purge, texts belonging to more than a dozen Secret Service agents — including Cheatle — before and after Jan. 6 were deleted and never recovered.
Cheatle defended the agency in an interview last year, saying, “Our integrity is everything. And there was nothing nefarious attached to that.”
Neither Cheatle and the Secret Service responded to Post’s requests for comment.
